What Does It Take For A Closed-Loop Cooler To Beat Big Air?

Historically, price was the biggest competitive problem for closed-loop liquid coolers. But several manufacturers recently dropped the prices of previous-generation products. The baseline NH-D14 is also expensive by air cooling standards, and is now matched by the reduced-price H90, X40, and 240M.

Price reductions are how the X40 and 240M beat Noctua's NH-D14 in a cooling/cost comparison. The H90 can beat the NH-D14’s value, but only when it’s mounted backwards. NZXT's Kraken X40 remains the real leader here.

However, overall performance compares cooling to noise. Using the numbers from that chart to map performance to price, we again find the NH-D14 on top. Thermaltake’s older Water2.0 Extreme takes second place when its fans are slowed through its automatic controller, and Zalman’s old LQ320 matches Corsair’s even older H90 with its fans at full-force. Both the LQ320 and H90 can be slowed through motherboard control, and either of these probably could have won the value debate if we arbitrarily set the motherboard’s fan slope to something approximating ideal cooling-to-noise conditions.

And the winner is? Well, we’d recognize the NH-D14 again if not for several factors, including the fact that this is a liquid-cooling shootout. A primary reason to choose one of these closed-loop solutions is that they place much less stress on a motherboard compared to big heat sinks. We’ve already destroyed a few thin platforms using massive chunks of metal bolted to processor interfaces, and we once had a board destroyed in shipping by its heavy cooler. It’s consequently difficult to recommend a socket-mounted cooler to anyone who moves their machine around, making it far easier to pick from the closed-loop contenders listed above.

Extra cooling capacity makes Thermaltake’s Water2.0 Extreme appear the better choice for large enclosures. Great value makes Corsair’s H90 and Zalman’s LQ320 appear excellent choices when the build is limited to a single fan mount.

length, width and thickness in inches, fan size in mm, weight in ounces. can we just have mm everywhere, and preferably kg as well?

razor512

Seems they reduced their old BS claim of handling 400 watts of heat on the Reserator 3 MAX, it is now 350 watts, but even that seems unrealistic.

Tomshardware should place some of these coolers on a resistive load of 300-400 watts and see if these coolers can actually handle the heat, or will the fluid boil and build up enough pressure to pop.

xiinc37

Isn't the whole point of watercooling to move the cooler far away from the cpu, so that there is more room to utilize a significantly larger radiator? The thermalright and zalman options look smaller than the noctua...

rmpumper

Grabbed a Dark Rock Pro 2 for my new setup. No regrets - looks a billion times better than D14, is less noisy, performs +-1C the same.

ingtar33

got an old corsair h100 for $50, which was less then the old heatsink i had on my phII x4 965 used to go for (thermalright ultra 120), Gained a solid 8C improvement in temps, lost some of the noise advantages (the ultra had two noctua's on it)... setting it to medium gave me a 5C improvement in temps, and about the same noise levels. overall i'm pretty happy with it. it looks cleaner, that's for sure.

bigcyco1

Thanks for the review.I always have said if someone is going to watercool they should go custom.IMO those all in one water cooling kits just are not worth it. They are no better than high-end air cooling like a Noctua D14, Thermalright Silver Arrow,Phanteks PH-TC14PE elect.If you want to go water cooling do a custom loop if not just go with top of the line air cooling.Better bang per buck!

itzsnypah

I wish there was some way to measure the DeltaT of the Ethylene Glycol used in these CLC's because truthfully I wouldn't be surprised to see >25c when using a overclocked 3960X.

ChromeTusk

I wonder how much the rear exhaust fan would have affected the Reserstor3’s results.In any case, I will wait for price drops or rebates.

djorgji

Is it so difficult to sort the results from best to worst? Lowest to highest etc?

Like this it is impossible to read.

nilfisktun

Well, those stock fans all blows, in my optic. You might call it cheating, but try slamming in two noctua pwm fans in a H100i for instance. I run this at home, and those fans typically runs at 600-800 rpm, therefore being totally silent. My stock temps rest around 38C, with 22C ambient, and hit around 60C at full prime load. i7 2600K @ 4.2 ghz. 1.28v

Plusthinking Iq

this is very bad testing, it only works for out of the box comparison. most of the watercoolers can be tweaked into lower speed of fans and even pump like they do on silentpcreview. this test i was hoping to answer my question if i could buy a dual fan watercooler instead of the air cooler to cool a i7 powerhouse with oc and still tweak it so its nearly silent. instead the fans are in the thousands of rpm when only 1000 is needed to cool efficiently......

Knoodle Knocker

I have H100, H100i, Coolermaster Seidon 240 and Thermal Take Water 2.0. Cooling wise, TT water 2.0 really works well in the extreme mode, but the fan is noisy and you can feel some vibrations in the PC case. Tt water 2.0 is excellent. There were times when I just turned on the PC and I thought that the PC was still off as I can't hear a noise coming out from the fans of Tt water 2.0. For quiet mode, this is the best. Over all, from what I have that I listed above, Tt water 2.0 is the best choice.

BigMack70

Thanks for the review! It's always nice to have roundups for coolers like this, and I think you guys are right on for using the D14 as the base of comparison (thanks for not using a less popular but newer cooler like the U14S).

I've been tempted for a long time to switch my NH-D14 out for a Corsair H110 and just use my 140mm Noctua fans on it... not sure if this review makes me want to do that more or not.

philly27

I would have liked to see Swiftech in there, even though it's a slightly different category. good article but I tend to agree with Plusthinking b/c tweaking w/o a neglect-able performance hit is achievable

JamesSneed

1413468 said:

this is very bad testing, it only works for out of the box comparison. most of the watercoolers can be tweaked into lower speed of fans and even pump like they do on silentpcreview. this test i was hoping to answer my question if i could buy a dual fan watercooler instead of the air cooler to cool a i7 powerhouse with oc and still tweak it so its nearly silent. instead the fans are in the thousands of rpm when only 1000 is needed to cool efficiently......

The testing may not have been what you were wanting but I don't think you can call it bad because they didn't test custom configurations. Your particular question has been answered, the answer is no, use the Noctua air cooler.

With that said I would appreciate a thermal test that used the same fan on every cooler to show efficiency.

slomo4sho

Noctua NF-F12 fans on my Cooler Master Seidon 240M perform well. The issue with the current selection of close-looped coolers are the fans that they come with. Noisy high rpm fans may be efficient at cooling and proving high static pressure but their performance doesn't justify the acoustics.

I am hoping that Toms has a followup article testing various radiator fans.

Drejeck

I have a D14 rheobus controlled to fixed 12v and I can't hear it over my antec Big Boy 200mm triple speed6 years of warranty outlive those AIO liquid cooling.Why are getting this crappy things so popular? I am gathering Bitspower fittings to start a real liquid loop (demineralized water and nickel plating only). AIO watercooling the cpu doesn't make sense to me given the performance of top air coolers and their reliability. It could make sense when you watercool a GPU which works a lot harder in a limited space and with weight issues.

bchan009

Can't speak for bigger AIOs but small-sized 120mm fan/radiator AIOs are a godsend for people who build mini ITX performance rigs like me. In some cases the biggest air cooling solution I can fit is the intel stock cooler, and AIOs save the day big time. =)

7amood

122690 said:

Thanks for the review! It's always nice to have roundups for coolers like this, and I think you guys are right on for using the D14 as the base of comparison (thanks for not using a less popular but newer cooler like the U14S).

how did you come to the conclusion that the U14S is less popular than the older NH-D14? The U14S has shown and proven that the NH-D14 is over-engineered. For an air cooler, the U14S competes with the best water coolers. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against water cooling. I'm just saying that the U14S is better than NH-D14 in performance as it is newer.

This review should have included the U14S as it is superior than that old NH-D14.

chesteracorgi

I have been running the Antec H20 920 for 2 + years, modding it out with Cougar 120 mm fans: the Antec fans were unacceptably loud, and used the Antec 620 in another gaming build. Both run quiet and cool (between +5 and + 10 C at idle) and never have exceeded 60 C in gaming or at stress. The torque on the mobo is minimal compared to the Noctua or other big air coolers and the case cooling is improved through greater circulation. Big air is fine for cooling but taxing on the mobo and impacts longevity. If you plan to keep a rig for more than 3 years beware of big air: mobos are not designed to endure constant shearing torque of 1-2 Kg.

Calculatron

Does this mean that another Big Air round-up is in the works? I hope so.

oj88

Noctua probably wins on its fan quality. I would like to see the test result using Noctua fans on all the water coolers.

Au_equus

I had a NH-D14 cooler in my setup, but had to take it out due to a factor not mentioned in this article: size. The fan brackets would press against the PCB of my 680. So it had to be removed in favor of a water cooled setup.

nukemaster

481417 said:

I had a NH-D14 cooler in my setup, but had to take it out due to a factor not mentioned in this article: size. The fan brackets would press against the PCB of my 680. So it had to be removed in favor of a water cooled setup.

I say this as someone who also has an H80i(only a single 120mm fan outlet on my case) and with some more quiet fans or a lower speed profile. It has worked out quite well and made more room in my case.